10 top rendering tips

By Poz Watson

Top 10 rendering tips! Learn to render better, smarter and more effectively. Our panel of experts reveal their top tips and techniques for successful renders

Rendering might be less fun and less exciting than the other parts of the 3D process, but it's just as vital. It's such a time-consuming process that if you don't know what you're doing, all you're doing is wasting time. Of course, done right, that rendering time is a good opportunity for you to process too, and when you get your finished renders out, hopefully you can come back to the work with a fresh eye. But first, you need to get those passes the way you want them, as our experts explore.

"Rendering a normal pass can be really helpful to add extra light to a rendered image. Each channel can be used as a light source, coming from each one of the 3D world axes” Carlos Ortega Elizalde

Render separately

"Sometimes my renders need a little sprucing up. I render out elements (background, foreground, character etc) as TGAs with alpha channels, then comp them in Photoshop. Adjustment layers such as selective color, hue/saturation and levels help me control the tones of the image. I also use vignette and iris blur if needed. I stay away from the chromatic aberration slider though – I see it overused far too much these days!” Andrew Hickinbottom

Comping together work in Photoshop gives you the chance to look at it fresh

Normal passes

"Rendering a normal pass can be really helpful to add extra light to a rendered image. Each channel can be used as a light source, coming from each one of the 3D world axes. While it does not represent physically accurate light, it helps artistically to accentuate important or lost zones of a rendered image by simulating a rim or a bounce light. It saves a lot of time to avoid re-rendering by tweaking or adding lights, and it works too in composition software for animated sequences.” Carlos Ortega Elizalde

Create a spec pass...

"To create a spec pass in Keyshot I usually use a wax material with 0 translucency and maximum specularity, then I turn the SColor and the Subsurface Color to black. Next thing to do is to make the background black and then I use the HDRI Urban to light the scene.” Luca Nemolato

Keyshot passes can be just the way to tweak your image to perfection

...and a skin pass

"To obtain a good and fast skin pass in Keyshot, I usually use the Human Skin material with the translucency set to 0.7 (this can vary depending on the model), roughness to 0.8 and then I load a Texture map and a Normal map. Usually I light it with the HDRI Factory." Luca Nemolato

Skin is something worth taking extra time on. So just experiment until it looks right!